No more. Since the manipulation scandal started to unfold in 2011, the benchmark has come under increasing scrutiny, reform and now, under new ownership, it will face its biggest test: can it be put beyond manipulation?

In winning the tender for Libor NYSE Euronext has entered into a regulatory labyrinth overseen by a silver haired Brit. The benchmark, despite its new U.S. owners, will still be regulated by the U.K. based Financial Conduct Authority, a body whose boss, Martin Wheatley, is fast casting himself as a global authority on re-thinking benchmark rates.

At the heart of the regulatory process will be how the scandal plagued rate, which underpins trillions of dollars of contracts and loans, can be rejigged to make it more accurate without causing huge disruption to the businesses which use it as a benchmark.

Some regulators, such as the CFTC Chair Garry Gensler, want Libor to be quickly overhauled and tied to observable market transactions rather than banks’ estimates of their borrowing costs. Mr. Wheatley, fearing this could cause an uproar among users, has so far opted for a more gradual transition.

Some steps have already been taken to make Libor more reliable. Last month the British Bankers’ Association, which has managed Libor since the 1980s and from whom responsibility is being stripped, said banks’ individual rate submissions won’t be published for three months to avoid potential rigging (the overall Libor rate, however, will continue to be published as normal).

Meanwhile U.K. regulators have to approve people who oversee rate-setting at banks. In turn banks have to put in place strict conflict-of-interest rules, aimed at stopping any collusion between derivatives traders who bet on the movement of the rates and those who decide and submit the rate at which the bank borrows.

But putting Libor beyond manipulation is a work in progress and could take several more years.

In the coming months NYSE will sit down with the FCA and industry participants to discuss how Libor can be reshaped to make it harder to rig and more tightly linked to banks’ actual borrowing costs. The consultation, which is likely to focus on the governance and construction of the rate, should be finished by the end of the year, a person close to the process said.

Meanwhile the folks at NYSE will be digesting the findings of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (chaired by Mr. Wheatley) which will soon publish a “best practice” guide for overseeing benchmarks. A draft version of the paper has urged that benchmarks be based on actual trades, rather than estimations.

Then NYSE will then head over to Basel. The Financial Stability Board is currently setting up a steering group, headed by Mr. Wheatley and Jeremy Stein, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, that will convene private sector participants and consider the best way to oversee benchmark rates, not just Libor.

Mr. Wheatley has already published one review into Libor. It took no prisoners, and the previously self-regulated rate became subject to regulatory oversight. The British Bankers Association lost its thirty year control of the benchmark, and was criticized by Wheatley.